News Headlines: Back Pain
Lumbar Supports Not Very Effective For Low Back Pain
Back Pain? Review Shows Insoles Won’t Help
Acupuncture May Be Better Than Conventional Therapy
Lumbar Supports Not Very Effective For Low Back Pain
Lumbar supports – also called braces or corsets – are not very effective at preventing low back pain or reducing disability in those who suffer from the condition, according to a review published in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.
Researchers at
In four studies, there was little or no difference between patients with acute or chronic back pain who used back supports and those who received no treatment in short-term pain reduction or overall improvement. In three studies there was little or no difference in short-term pain reduction, overall improvement and return-to-work between those who used back supports and those who received manipulation, physiotherapy, or electrical stimulation.
In one study, back supports along with patient education about recovering from back pain were helpful in reducing the number of days of sick leave but not in preventing back pain. In another, back supports plus usual medical care reduced the number of days of low-back pain and improved function, but did not reduce sick leave.
The researchers say conclusions from this review should be viewed with caution due to the low quality of many of the studies. In the future, researchers should report side effects from wearing back supports and measure how many hours per day the supports are actually worn. 4/25/08
Back Pain? Review Shows Insoles Won’t Help
Are you looking to shoe insoles to ease or prevent back pain? Then you might need to look elsewhere, a new review of studies shows.
The review, which was published in The Cochrane Library, looked at three studies involving 2,061 people, which focused on the use of customized and standard insoles versus either no treatment or sham inserts for back pain prevention. Another three studies comprising 256 patients examined the use of insoles for either prevention or treatment of existing back pain.
The review showed that there was inadequate evidence to support purchasing or prescribing shoe insoles to either prevent back pain or treat it. Furthermore, many of the people in the studies reported that insoles were uncomfortable
So are shoe insoles useless? Not necessarily, say the researchers. There are some people who did benefit from them. Furthermore, says lead author Tali Sahar, PhD, of
Acupuncture May Be Better Than Conventional Therapy for Back Pain
If you suffer from lower back pain, you might find that six months of acupuncture gives you superior results to conventional therapy, according to a new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, the study also indicates that sham acupuncture seems to be effective as well.
In the study, German researchers randomized 1162 people with chronic low back pain into three groups – one group received twice-weekly sessions of verum (real) acupuncture based on traditional Chinese medicine; one received sham acupuncture involving the superficial insertion of needles at nonacupuncture points; and one received a combination of medication and physical therapy.
After six months, the response rate – defined as at least a 33 percent improvement in pain and 12 percent improvement in functional ability – was 47.6 percent in the verum acupuncture group, 44.2 percent in the sham group and 27.4 percent in the conventional therapy group.
The researchers say the superiority of both forms of acupuncture suggests a common underlying mechanism that may act on pain generation, transmission of pain signals or processing of pain signals by the central nervous system that is stronger than the action mechanism of conventional therapy. But more studies are needed.
